Saturday, January 5, 2013

Dispatches from the AHA in New Orleans (5)

I spent the early part of the morning practicing my own paper in
front of the mirror in my hotel room, and then headed out to the Hotel
Roosevelt for a panel exploring the legacy of
Roe v Wade on its fortieth anniversary. A quartet of scholars
teased apart the threads of the often black and white discussion on
abortion rights in the United States, revealing, as only historians can,
the importance of specificity and a close attention
to chronology.

Johanna Schoen, of Rutgers - New Brunswick, dealt with the evolution
of the controversy over late term abortion in the 1970s, beginning with
the case of a Massachusetts doctor prosecuted for manslaughter for
performing an abortion. Key to her analysis was
the move on the part of anti-abortion activists to shift the debate
from abstract moral principles or discussion of the medical reasoning
behind different types and timings of abortion to aesthetic concerns.

Sarah Rowley, of Indiana University Bloomington,
examined "Roe" as a symbol, noting that for the first decade of its
existence, it was rarely mentioned by name in discussions of abortion
rights. In the 1980s, Rowley argued, the rhetoric of "Roe" changed. She
claims that for American social conservatives,
"Roe" came to signify all that they feared from an overreaching
government acting through an unelected court that endangered local
control. "Roe," therefore, could remind one as much of one's personal
anger over the removal of prayer from schools as much as
any feelings about abortion.

Sara DuBow, of Williams College, began her
paper on the history of conscience clauses with several court decisions
from previous weeks, serving as an effective reminder of the pressing
importance of her work. In examining the 1973
conscience clause, DuBow noted the very different political landscape
that allowed it to gain bipartisan support, not necessarily because
legislators agreed with it, but because many of them felt its effects
would be minimal. In light of current debates, and
in light of the fact that 87% of U.S. counties now have no abortion
provider, DuBow closed by pondering whether the legislators who voted
for the conscience clause out of pragmatism not conviction would vote
for it again today.

The final paper, by Mary Ziegler
of Saint Louis University, examined the conflicts within groups like
NARAL and NOW in the wake of the decision. Activists had hoped that
implementation and education would be the next step after the court's
decision, and for many of them, that meant a broader
agenda of reproductive health and social justice issues, focusing on
intersecting racial and social issues. When state level limitations on
abortion began to pile up in the 1970s, however, many activists
disagreed on whether or not to pursue a single-issue
agenda to defend a woman's right to choose. The Reagan revolution and
the increased attention on a state's rights agenda from some in Congress
caused many activists to resign themselves to a continued focus on
abortion rights.

After a brief comment from Reva Siegel (Yale) because the panel
itself was only 90 minutes, the audience had a chance to weigh in. The
discussion shifted quite quickly to the issue of sources, more
particularly to a discussion of the availability of archival
holdings for the anti-abortion movement, and the effect that the dearth
of sources has on historiography of that part of the movement. Nancy
Cott testified to the fact that her attempts to work with archives to
preserve the anti-abortion movement's history
for the use of scholars had met with resistance from those within the
movement, and all present agreed that the nuanced, complex arguments
necessary in understanding this issue could only be helped by the
preservation of more of the relevant documents from
all perspectives.